A new wrinkle reveals multiple truths.
Creative Staff:
Story: Jeff Lemire
Art: David Rubin
What They Say:
After discovering that Sherlock Frankenstein held a secret super-villain meeting right before Black Hammer disappeared, the trail of clues leads Lucy Weber to one of her father’s greatest archenemies–the Metal Minotaur.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With just one more issue to go this series moves us fairly quickly toward our encounter with Sherlock Frankenstein. I’m sure that like many other readers the series could run for a dozen issues and introduce us to move villains as Lucy explores and researches in her quest to find her father but Jeff Lemire is keeping it tighter at just four issues. I get it and I like but I could go for a year’s worth of material like this from him and David Rubin, particularly as Rubin feels like he’s opening up even more creatively to bring things to life and work outside of the usual types of characters and situations. This is another strong installment here that should be a must-see book for aspiring artists in how to put a page and story together.
Lucy’s journey has been to some interesting places and after he encounter with Cthu-Lou we saw how she was knocked out in her dad’s basement by a mystery person that likely made off with something. While there are no clues there she follows up on the Metal Minotaur who she knows as just N. Parker and is apparently in a rest home of some sort getting care. That the Metal Minotaur is a woman is a nice little change on things and even Lucy is surprised by it, but Parker makes it clear that she owned it wholly and that a lot of it comes from the fact that it was the 70’s and that was just how certain villains were put together with something like a giant metal minotaur. Her details of some of the fights are intriguing and I really liked that she continually did upgrades over time to go up against Black Hammer and the rest.
The book does take a pair of expected turns as it sets up for the finale and they’re both well executed. Parker relates how she took her minotaur suit too far at one point and miscalculated which lead to her breaking her back in it and losing the ability to walk. That had Black Hammer taking her to the other world to try and help her and he spent months visiting her over that to talk with her about his family, hers, and anything else while she recovered. The other is that Parker reveals what really went on with that secret meeting in that while Lucy figured it was about how to take advantage of the Anti-God’s presence it was really Sherlock trying to figure out how to help but being too late. That was an easy read earlier in the series when it first came out based on what we knew of Sherlock in the present but the team puts it together well here while leading us to where he is now, which is essentially hiding in the plain open.
In Summary:
There’s a lot to like in this issue and in this series in general. As we’ve talked about before both in this series and the main Black Hammer series, Lemire is working with familiar ideas with great execution. His work with Ormston takes it to a whole other level combined with the pacing and dialogue while what we’re getting here with David Rubin is a great expansion showing different sides and ways to view things. Lucy’s been difficult to connect with in the main book but this humanizes her so much as well as a few of the villains similar to the main book that it’s very engaging but also a whole lot of fun. I can’t wait to see how it all wraps up.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: December 20th, 2017
MSRP: $3.99
